coworkers can’t believe I’m not wearing a coat, asking to work remotely after getting a tattoo, and more — Ask a Manager

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Coworkers are very concerned that I’m not wearing a coat

I am a relatively young woman (late 20s) in a workplace in which many of my coworkers are twice my age or more, and the profession is heavily skewed female. I’ve been at this workplace for about four months.

I leave the building for my lunch break, we all walk to the parking lot together upon closing for the day, and I find myself occasionally going outside for one reason or another. I live in a cold climate, but I hate wearing coats for short trips outside partially because I run hot and partially because of neurodiversity-related sensory issues. I am usually just wearing a thin cardigan if I’m wearing any layers at all.

Nine times out of ten, if a coworker spots me leaving the building, they will literally gasp or admonish me in some way for not wearing a coat for what is essentially a 50-foot walk to my car. One has even taken me aside and inquired if I was able to purchase a winter coat and offered to help me buy one, which was an incredibly kind offer but made me feel embarrassed.

I know they’re asking out of concern and genuine care, but it makes me feel disrespected and not taken seriously as a fellow professional. I am one of the youngest members of the professional staff and more than one coworker has noted that they have children older than me, so I feel as if I constantly have to prove myself.

I usually respond to these comments with something plain (“Thank you, but I’m okay”) or joking (“I’m fine, I’m actually part yeti”) but they continue. How can I reframe my thoughts so that these comments stop bothering me as much as they do?

It’s the age thing that’s making this feel as weird as it does; if your coworkers were all your same age and making the exact same comments, I bet it would read differently. But because you’re the youngest — and very aware of it — the comments are landing as if they think you need mothering, which makes you feel babied.

Would it help to reframe it as “these are kind people who would express the same concern to a 50-year-old coworker”? I don’t know if that’s true — people do often want to caretake younger coworkers in ways they wouldn’t with older ones — but I also don’t know that it’s not true, so if we’re talking about mental reframing, that might be the way to go. Also, if you’re generally respected at work and taken seriously, it might help to center that in your head — yes, you might be getting more caretaking directed at you because you’re younger, but if your work is taken seriously, that’s what really matters. (If it’s not, that’s a whole different issue, but then that would be more the issue than The Coat.)

Also, it might help to start responding with, “I have coats! I just run hot and often don’t wear them.” It might not stop the concerned comments, but it’ll at least establish that you’re not the Little Match Girl.

Related:
I’ve accidentally convinced my coworkers that I’m homeless – but I’m not!

2. Asking to work remotely after getting a tattoo

I work in municipal government under a mayor who banned remote work this year for all municipal employees. Currently, we are only allowed to ask to work remotely if there are extenuating circumstances and if it’s not a recurring request. We can only do so for a day at a time, and it must be approved ahead of time by my grandboss.

I am getting a (huge) tattoo for my birthday next week. I am taking the day off for the all-day appointment. The day after, I would be fine to work, except the placement of the tattoo makes it impossible to wear pants in the immediate healing stage. Ideally, I could work from home for the next two days so I don’t use up all my vacation time for this. A doctor’s note is required for sick time. However, I don’t know how to word my request to work remotely! I am the only person in my relatively small department who has requested to work from home under the new policy, and I have used it two or three times since the summer. I am worried that asking for remote work the day after my birthday looks like I am planning to party hard and be hungover — bad optics. I’m hoping you can help me formulate the request to work from home, or that the commenters can give advice on wearing clothes over a large lower back piece.

Well … I don’t think you should.

To be clear, you should be able to! If your job can be done effectively from home, there’s no reason you should need to use vacation time for this. But look at the facts: your job frowns on remote work and only allows it under unusual circumstances, you’ve already used it a few times since the summer, you’re the only one in your department who has, you’re new, and the request would be for the two days after a day you’re already taking off. It looks bad. I’m not saying that’s reasonable; it’s not. But that’s the reality you’re working with, with your particular employer’s culture on this.

You’d probably be better off getting the tattoo on a Friday and using the weekend for it to heal. I’m sorry, I know that sucks! Your workplace has made their stance pretty clear, though, and this will use too much capital for a new employee.

3. I think my employee is using AI to produce bad writing

I’m a new manager and am almost certain the employee I’m managing is using AI.

I think AI works great for certain jobs, but the problem is that he’s using it to generate articles/comms that need to have a lot of nuance. Not only are the same mistakes coming up, but I worry the tone is obvious to others familiar with AI, which is a bit of a reputational risk.

I’d ideally want to have a frank discussion about common AI pitfalls so he can avoid those issues, but I’m conscious it may come across as an accusation, which he can deny anyway. Should I just act as if the output is his work and give my edits as normal?

Have a conversation with him! Give your edits — both specific edits and broad pattern edits (tone, voice, etc.) — and then say, “I don’t know if you’ve played around with AI for any of this, but some of it reads as sounding AI-generated, so either way it made me realize we should talk about why we don’t and can’t use AI.” If he says he hasn’t been using AI, you can say, “Okay, good. Let’s take a minute anyway to talk about why it’s something we can’t use, in case it ever does come up.” So you’re not getting into whether or not he did; you’re just laying out the reasons your team can’t. And then explain the voice issues, nuance, accuracy, concerns about proprietary info, copyright, or whatever AI problems are relevant in your field (likely all of those at some level or other).

4. Will a new employer let you roll over unused vacation time from your last job?

I know someone who is job searching to move to a new city. He works at a hospital in a health care capacity, and has worked at his current employer for 15 years. His vacation accrues with the number of hours worked; if he works extra hours, he accrues more vacation time.

He believes he has heard that employers will roll over vacation hours accrued to one another — i.e., that his unused vacation time could be picked up and made already available by the new employer. I told him that there are employers that will allow for negotiating accrual rates (“my previous employer supplied 20 days of vacation accrued over the year, can you match that”), but I’ve never heard of a company providing the accrued but unused time from a previous employer. The hospital system he is currently employed at is only in one state; this isn’t something where you would find it across the nation.

Is this something you’ve heard of happening, and if so, in what situation? I really can’t picture this in a nonprofit health setting.

No, that’s not a thing that typically happens when you’re moving to an entirely new employer (as opposed to moving around internally). You’re right that you can often negotiate the amount of vacation time you earn each year so that you don’t go from, say, six weeks a year to two, but employers don’t typically “roll over” whatever unused vacation time you have from somewhere else. That’s the other company’s accounting system, not theirs! (Ideally unused time would be paid out when you leave, but not every state requires that. It would be a particularly weird request in states that do … although, really, it’s likely to come across as a pretty strange request everywhere.)

5. My coworker’s out-of-office reply keeps (wrongly) sending people to me

Would you consider the ability to put together an out-of-office auto-reply a pretty basic, table-stakes skill?

I have a colleague, Barb, who is relatively new to our company (less than a year). We both work in IT and have mutually dependent jobs — think project manager (multiple projects across multiple teams) and team lead (accountable for stakeholder relationships and work prioritization for a team). Barb’s first big project was with me and my team, although she has other accountabilities as well.

Not long after Barb started, she had some PTO scheduled and asked if she could list my name in her out-of-office auto-reply. I said that of course she could list me for project X that we were working on together. But I didn’t know her other work, so I didn’t want to be listed as the contact for those other efforts. A few months later, we had more or less the same conversation. Barb asked to list me in her out-of-offfice; I said only for the project that we were working on together. Time passes, and another PTO comes around. No asking to use my name, which is fine. But then I get a message from a person on a related team asking about something that is Barb’s responsibility. Because Barb listed my name (and only my name) in her out-of-office message. I didn’t check the other two times, but I’m guessing she listed me then as well.

Part of me thinks this is so small and not worth following up on. But also, this feels like part of a pattern, where she asks questions in a “I’m new here” way, but when she doesn’t like the answer, she does what she wanted anyway.

She’s been in the business world for 20+ years, as have I. I am baffled that someone with this level of experience doesn’t have a grasp of out-of-office message patterns. And even if the pattern at this company is different from what she’s experienced before, being told no twice and just ignoring it really annoys me.

Are my expectations unreasonable? That an experienced project manager (1) would be able to put together an out-of-office message without any drama and at the very least would learn after one iteration and (2) wouldn’t blatantly ignore a colleague’s explicit “no”?

Your expectations are not unreasonable on either count. That said, this is probably less about her not knowing how to put together an out-of-office and more about general incompetence and/or intransigence.

Why not just say, “Hey, please stop listing name on your out-of-office replies; I’m getting messages from people about things I’m not involved in”? And then if she does it again: “I saw you listed me in your out-of-office again. Is there a reason you’re doing that even though I asked you not to?” And meanwhile, just direct anyone who messages you back to Barb: “I’m not sure why she listed me as the contact; I’m not the right person for that, so you’ll need to check back with her.”